Zombieland Vs Exotroopers
by David N. Brown
Summary: A trio of survivors, a horde of zombies, a band of mechanized warriors and a division of the US Army are thrown into battle by an interdimensional collision! David N. Brown resides in Mesa, Arizona.
1. Chapter 1

**The inevitable... Hey, it was this or a "slash" fic (not "Talumbus"). The opening paragraphs are an alternate draft of "Trip to Vegas" that I created for the_ Zombie Vegas_ ebook.**

Wichita and Columbus lay on a mattress in the back of the Caddy. Wichita spoke softly: "You know what I think about? How many ways we could never have happened. If we hadn't been in that grocery store. If you and Tal had kept driving. If just one of us hadn't made it." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you think it was_ just_ chance?"

"You mean, do I believe in God, or fate, or something like that?" She only looked at him, waiting for him to say more. "I don't know. When I was a kid, I went to church, and I believed in what they were saying. By the time I was in middle school, I would tell people I was an atheist, though I guess I never got my heart into it. Now, I guess I'm agnostic."

"Columbus?" she said. He looked at her. "I believe there's something. And I think we were meant to get together."

"I do, too," he said.

"But... sometimes it's hard for me to believe that. Especially when I think about when I stopped to let you out," she said. "I told you I hoped you would find who you were looking for. But I wanted to ask you to stay. Sometimes... I stay awake wondering if I would have, if you had gotten out that door." She shivered.

"I wouldn't have," he said, and hugged her legs. It was not long until Wichita was asleep, but Columbus's eyes remained open, gleaming with tears.

_Some time, some where..._

A Humvee rolled through the ruins of a town in Oklahoma, just ahead of a pack of zombies. At the wheel was Krista. Beside her as Austin, her boyfriend of almost 2 years. In the back was her younger foster sister, Abbie.

"We're running low on gas," said Austin.

"They're catching up!" said Abbs. She drove faster, gaining distance but burning up fuel faster.

"What's that?" Austin said. He pointed to a strange shimmering patch in the air, a few hundred feet away and fifty feet off the ground. As she looked, the patch was enveloped in something like a cloud of lightning. Zombies staggered back, their sensitive eyes blinded by the light. The lights on the dashboard dimmed. Then the Humvee coasted to a halt.

"Go, go, go!" Abbs screeched. Krista was trying to start the ignition again even before the car stopped. Austin climbed up the cupola and fired an old double shotgun at the nearest zombie. They had emptied the vehicle's machine gun escaping the infested refugee camp where they got the vehicle. The light went out, and a disc-shaped object dropped out of the sky like a falling manhole cover.

The engine sputtered back to life, and Krista did a hard turn, trying to evade the zombies. She raced down a street, then did another hard turn. As she rounded the corner, she beheld a figure neither human nor zombie, but what looked like a machine: pyramids and polyhedra of steel gray, arranged in the shape of a man. It raised a hand at her, and then clenched the hand in a fist. As the Humvee crashed into the figure, he- or it- punched through the hood, and then Krista's world went dark as her head hit the steering wheel.


	2. Chapter 2

Toward the center of town, the streets were mostly empty, except for the dead. But one intersection was empty no longer. A circular platform, 10 feet wide with three eight-foot-tall poles at equal intervals on its circumference, stood in the center. The asphalt around it was cracked and buckled from a landing at substantial velocity. On the edge of a platform, three figures of angled slabs arranged in the form of men surveyed the surroundings. In the center was one more heavily armored than the others, wearing a crown of rusty iron rods around the peak of his pyramidal helmet. This obviously authoritative figure turned around and spoke, to two figures swathed in silvery "hazmat" suits standing pussled at a column in the center. "This does not," the crowned figure said in a deep, tauntingly matter-of-fact voice, "appear to be Stalingrad."

Krista awoke slumped over the steering wheel. A weapon was firing nearby, very loudly. Turning her head, she saw Austin. "Austin! Honey, are you okay?"

He raised his head and groaned, "No worse."

The dashboard on her side had buckled, leaving Krista partially pinned. Austin unbuckled her seat belt, but she pushed him away before he could try to help her further. "I'm fine! Check Abbs!" By the time she had extricated herself, her boyfriend and sister were crouched beside the car. The weapon roared again, joined by a quieter but faster-firing gun. "What did we hit?" she said.

"It was a robot," Abbs said, almost excited. "It had to be! It could have come from another planet. Or maybe it was from the future, like the Terminator!"

"I don't know if it was human, but I'm pretty sure it's not a robot," Austin said. "Not exactly. Whatever it is, it's not alone. They're coming back!"

The first had to be the one they had struck. He was missing the angular helmet they had seen before, but its loss revealed an inner helmet, a visor and an armor-plated gas mask beneath. On his back were two wing-like projections, and a hose connected each one to the pelvis. He limped noticeably, but still moved fast, staying well ahead of the others. Krista realized he- or it- must have stripped down his armor. Another warrior shouted at him, and he shouted back. She couldn't understand the speech, though she thought it might be Russian, but there was no mistaking the tone of good natured "ragging". The warrior he exchanged shouts with wore some kind of collar around his neck. Was it- no, it couldn't be- _a toilet seat?_

Austin was more puzzled. He was now sure they were human, or at least humanoid organisms. They were wearing some kind of mechanized exoskeleton, probably made of a composite of ceramic and metal, like the M1 tank. As he looked, a third came running. Its armor was heavier, a different model of the same basic design. The other two also wore visibly different armor, but those differences looked like the products of individual improvisation, not factory variants. He was reminded of the stories of the first World War I aviators, modifying their planes like "hot rods" to give themselves an edge over their adversaries, even before their commanders decided that planes were useful for anything but observation. Something wasn't right about that. If these were some future society's equivalent of infantry, their equipment would be standardized. Idiosyncratic changes to their equipment would be discouraged, even penalized. So the armor was a new technology, even to them. And these must be elite troops, trusted with unusual missions and accorded the privilege of choosing and even building their own equipment.

A fourth appeared, wearing a helmet covered in chains. He looked at the faster one of the pair, now almost to the wreck of the Humvee. He had to be a leader; the others were waiting for him as he fired a tremendous machine gun. Abby whimpered at the sound, and he himself covered his ears, shedding silent tears at the sheer pain of the sound. Scarcely twenty feet away, the fastest of the warriors stopped and turned back, giving him a clear look at a hydraulic motor on the back of the inner calf. That was when he realized the strangest thing about them: The armor of these warriors was not advanced enough. Nothing like it existed, but there was nothing he saw that could not be built with technology already in existence. Indeed, theirs were the conservative route. There were other ideas already proposed, like synthetic materials that imitated muscle tissue, that if pursued would make their angled slabs and visible hydraulics as antiquated as Da Vinci's ornithopter.

Then there was the fast warrior's gun; and in a way it was Abby who put her finger on it first. As the leader let up his fire and shouted to the others, she exclaimed, "That looks just like the gun from _Aliens_!" He looked again. It seemed impossible, but there could be no mistake.

"It is one of the guns from _Aliens_," he said. Both girls stared at him.

"What," said Krista, "you mean a gun made up for a movie actually got built in the future?"

"It wasn't made up; they took a real gun and dressed it up to look futuristic for the movie," he said. "It's called an MG42, and it was made in World War 2... by the Nazis."


	3. Chapter 3

**Still working out the "Vegas Saga" story arc. In the meantime, more exotroopers! This chapter has the scene that sold me on doing this story.**

The crowned figure looked between the two in hazmat suits, to look at a control panel and a transparent LED display, with the unmistakable bearing of someone who is servant on paper and leader in practice. The main interface was something like a two-person, see-through keyboard, accessed by reaching underneath. The display showed mostly lines and tubes, twisting and turning almost but not quite chaotically. "Dr. Paulus, we must know now," said the one with the crown, "where are we? What time, what place is this?"

One of the men at the key board tsked and removed his mask, revealing a bland, squarish face. The author followed suit, exposing a long, slender visage, light-skinned but vaguely African. "There were no miscalculations," said the first man. "Whatever happened was in the machine, or in space-time itself..."

"Very well," said the warrior chief. "Then what _could_ have happened?"

"Patience, Zaratustra," said the third man. Then he said to Paulus, "So, what do you think happened?"

"I can't say anything for sure, not yet," Paulus answered defensively. "There are too many unknowns, too much that is still theory..."

The warrior stepped forward, making a fist. "It is not theory now. Now give me at least your most educated guess: Where... are... we?"

"You know there are two different designs for temporal displacement on the drawing board," Paulus said. "One would use a `time bell': launched from, and automatically recalled to, a non-mobile facility in our own time. This is a `self-propelled' model."

"Of course," said Zaratustra. His right hand clenched in a fist, only, the third finger stuck out, perfectly straight. "Why would that be important?"

"There were some- concerns," Paulus said, flinching involuntarily as mailed shoulders hunched. "Some thought, without an `anchor' in a specific time, a temporal displacement problem might experience `yaw'... go off-course."

"To where? The wrong time? The wrong place? Or a whole other universe?"

"Those terms you are putting it in," Paulus said nervously, "are really to crude to be-" Zaratustra slapped his fist in his palm. "Yes! It's possible we're in a different space-time!"

"You said nothing of that possibility."

"There was no way to know! We couldn't be sure there were other continua... Even now, there are other possibilities."

"Worlds within worlds, and without," Zaratustra said. He abruptly hauled Paulus off his feet. "_Dumkopf!_ What if we had materialized in the depths of space, or the core of a star? Or worse: We could have descended to a pit of hell! Appeared in the flesh before the terrible El Shadi!" He shook the scientist too brutally for an answer.

The two lightly armored warriors ran in to restrain Zaratustra. Then the other scientist spoke: "Enough!" Zaratustra set down Paulus, who staggered off dizzily. "What went wrong is not our foremost concern. Our highest priority is how- or if- we can get back home."

Austin raised his hands as the warrior with the MG42 approached. The one with the toilet seat collar hung back, covering his partner with what Austin recognized as a modified AGS 30 grenade launcher. At a slight motion, he stepped away from the vehicle, leading Krista and Abbie with him. The warrior with the heavy armor moved in, not toward then but the humvee. He ripped off the massively misshapen hood, kicked out the worst of the dents and hung it on his chest. Then he flipped the vehicle over and, with three tugs, wrenched out the drive shaft. Austin drew further back, to avoid spattering oil and transmission fluid. The warrior gripped the shaft with both hands, then hefted it over his shoulder like a bat. Krista said, "What... the..." They were interrupted by the warrior with chains on his helmet.

"Where are we?" he demanded.

Krista blurted, "You speak English?"

The warrior with the grenade launcher cut in with a laugh. "Gotta be the US, then. Only an American would be surprised we speak _their _language, while they can't figure out we have our own language."

"We're in Oklahoma, United States... I don't know the city. Somewhere south of Tulsa."

"What happened?"

Austin was nonplused. "You don't know?"

"Yeah, normally we would notice something like cannibals destroying a city," said Toilet Seat.

"It's not just this city," Austin said. "It's a virus, spreading all over the US... maybe the country. It started three weeks ago, right here in Tulsa... Oh... and the year is 2009."

Chains nodded. "Come with us, and we will give our protection. My commander will want to speak to you."

"You bet," said the one with the MG42, directly to Krista. "I have all the protection you need, right..."

"I get it, you're God's gift to women," Krista said sardonically. "News flash, Romeo: I'm with him."

Toilet Seat laughed. "You think he's some kind of pickup artist? You should see him out of armor. Last time we were in a bar was three months ago, and he couldn't get even a phone number."

"Well, you didn't either!" MG said indignantly.

"So," said Abbie, "who are you guys?" She flinched as the MG 42.

"You can call me Dreadlocks," said "Chains". "These two are the Flea and the Tick. Him we call Sunflower. We are the _hercegs_: the most elite force of the Army of the Federal Republic of Serbia. In English, they call us finbacks. And, we come from the year 2044."

The Tick's grenade launcher joined the roar of the Flea's MG42. The sound of both weapons put together was not enough to drown out the pounding feet of approaching zombies. "Fall back!" Dreadlocks ordered. Sunflower stuck the drive shaft between his fins and unlimbered a 57mm recoilless gun. As the other finbacks withdrew, he attached an oversized projectile to the muzzle of the weapon. Dreadlocks waved the Flea, the Tick and the civilians into the alley. Abbie whimpered as she glimpsed the incoming horde.

A flood of fire rushed by, backblast from the recoilless gun. Car windows shattered, and at least one flipped over and blew up. Then there was a buzzing whistle. The Tick waved Austin and the girls further back. Then there was a brilliant flash, then a thunderous boom and a terrible wind.

As Austin's hearing came back, he barely hear a shout from Sunflower: "Clear."


	4. Chapter 4

**I'm trying to handle the rest of this story in one go. I realized, there's a major continuity glitch with the Tick's weapon in chapter 3. What he has here is what I originally planned in this story.**

Austin and Krista had been together for almost a year. They had met while volunteering at a museum. Austin was working for credits on his geology degree. She had been working off community service time as part of a plea bargain that kept her out of jail and together with her sister. Their first task had been to macerate the carcass of a deer with nothing but garden hoses. The rest was history. Five days earlier, Austin had come up from Texas for a week-long visit that would end with their anniversary. Just after he arrived in Tulsa, the city was placed under martial law. Then history was history.

As they walked, Krista took his hand, and squeezed hard. He gently squeezed back, and started to raise her hand for a kiss. Then he let it drop. "I don't know who these people are," he said, "but it looks like they want to help us. They might have a-"

She shook her head sadly. "Don't say it. Please."

"I love you," he said.

"I love you, too," she answered. She flicked a tear from her eye.

The finbacks paused at a shout, from another armored warrior with a lighter exoskeleton. After a brief exchange of words, the lightly armored one (dubbed a squire) called back. Zaratustra came forward. Even without the crown of iron rods, Austin would have known him for the leader at once. His bearing, confident and casual, projected leadership, though something undefinable suggested to Austin that his natural place was just below the top of the chain of command.

"I am Zaratustra," the leader said, in accented but very clear English. "You may call me Zed. It seems this is America."

"Yes," Austin said, "but not yours." He boldly added, "Where- when- were you trying to go?"

Zaratustra only laughed. "I believe you know I have orders not to answer that."

"Sir," said the squire, "we have strong but diffuse sonic signatures, closing from multiple directions. Several thousand, maybe more than ten thousand. We need to fall back to a defensible location. Also, we detected an aerial signature, which appears to be circling at a fixed distance."

"To be expected," Zed replied. Turning to his men, he asked, "How much ammunition have you used up?"

The Flea jingled a cloth bag that hung from his MG 42. "About a thousand rounds."

The Tick reached between his fins, but found himself empty-handed. "Hm... I guess I used up everything I had, except what's still in the box."

"I used a couple canisters and a TB shell," said Sunflower.

"That is more than a quarter of our ammunition," said Zed. "Yet, more are coming." He looked to Austin and Krista. "How many of these could be in the area?"

Krista shrugged. Austin said, "There were 400 thousand people in Tulsa, and another 500 thou in the metro area- that's 6,000 square miles. Nobody knows how fast the disease spreads, or exactly how it affects people... The way I heard it, there can't be more than one zombie- that's what we call them- for every ten people in the population. By the time there are that many, too many victims are killed outright for the numbers to get higher. Then three-quarters of the infected die after a few days. Plus, the military killed a lot of them, and they say more than a hundred thousand refugees got out. So... twenty thousand, maybe?"

"Do they gather in groups?"

"No," Austin said. "Not that anyone's seen. Normally, they spread out pretty thin."

"Then there should not be so many here," Zaratustra said. "Either there are many more, or something was drawing them here even before our arrival."

The squire looked at the screen. "Contacts are incoming, 1000 m and closing! 200 at least!"

"Take the civilians back to the platform," Zed ordered. "Conserve ammunition."

"Contact at a hundred meters!" Fifty zombies suddenly rounded a corner a few blocks away, in the direction of the time machine. The Tick fired three bursts with a .50 cal. The bullets were some kind of explosive round, detonating in bright flashes and showers of sparks and white-hot shrapnel. About a score of zombies went down before the gun clicked empty. Abbie shrieked as five zombies rushed at her. The Flea turned, but Sunflower stepped in his way. Something heavy swung right over the girl's head, and the nearest zombie was suddenly without his. Sunflower lumbered past her, swinging the drive shaft he had torn from the humvee. He felled three zombies at a stroke, then thrust the shaft into the face of the last. Abbs yelped at the spatter. The finback kept going, swinging again, and again, and again, and again, and there was no need to keep swinging after that.

From the other direction, the first of an unguessably huge horde appeared. "Run, lardarse!" shouted the Flea. He emptied his machine gun with four seconds of fire. Then Zaratustra and Dreadlocks drew huge sidearms that fired 12-gauge shells, picking off zombies while the squire reloaded the Flea's gun. Meanwhile, Austin and the sisters ran after the Tick and Sunflower. The Tick stowed his .50 cal and drew a World War 2-vintage "Shpagin" submachine gun, with which he shot the odd wounded zombie under foot.

As the zombies closed in, the finback rear guard turned to their weapons of very last resort, a double-barreled 43 mm grenade launcher mounted on the left forearm. They launched volleys of flechettes, clouds of white phosphorous that set flesh on fire, and a bizarre "bola" shell that cut through the zombies with three disks of spinning wire. Still, the zombies came on, and they fell back.

Then, the distant droning of helicopter blades drew nearer. Abbs cried out in surprise as a chopper swept over their heads. Krista and Austin turned in hope. As it reached the line of the rear guard, gatling guns roared, and rockets sailed into the throng of zombies. Krista whooped and embraced Austin, who held her stiffly at arm's length. The chopper did a very tight loop around a building. Behind them, Sunflower muttered to a squire. Krista turned her head and stiffened, then lunged for the finback. "What are you-?"

Austin tackled her just before sunflower launched a missile that blew the helicopter out of the sky.


	5. Chapter 5

Austin stiffly hugged Krista at the edge of the time machine platform. She was shaking. "That was one of ours," she said through clenched teeth. "They just killed an American! Don't you care?"

"Of course I do," he soothed. "But there's nothing we can do, and I'm not surprised. They're trained to kill, and they have technology our people would kill to get."

Krista gave him a dark look. "What- you're saying they did the right thing shooting down that helicopter?"

"I'm saying they did what they had to do." He put an arm around her, balling his jacket sleeve around his hand.

Abbie chatted cheerfully with- or at least at- the one called Zaratustra. "So- you were at war before you came here?"

"You could say that," he answered

"And, you're from Serbia?"

"No, Germany. I am fighting as a member of Serbia's federal army. The Tick is Russian. The others are Serbs."

"Who were you at war with?"

"Kosova and Albania, mainly. It started out with an insurrection by the Bosnians in Serbia. Bosnia stayed out of it, but the Kosovars didn't."

"I heard Serbia was at war with Kosovo and Bosnia before," Little Rock said. "Do they hate Muslims or something?"

"That is a misunderstanding," Zaratustra said, then added, "They hate Catholics."

"But- aren't the Serbs Catholic? Or Christian, anyway?"

"Oh, a cute one!" said the Tick.

"Look, see," the Flea said, "Serbia is Orthodox."

"What does that mean?"

"Okay, see... Constantine. Do you know who Constantine is? Okay, so, Constantine founded a `Catholic' church for the Roman empire. But, it wasn't _the _Catholic church. Back then, there wasn't even a pope! See, Constantine appointed _two_ people to lead the church, the Bishop of Rome, and the Patriarch of Constantinople. Then, like, a thousand years later, see, the Bishop of Rome said he should have all the power. So, the Patriarch excommunicated him..."

Abbie looked to the Tick. "Don't ask me," he said, "I'm agnostic."

Krista lifted her eyes, to see one of the squires stopped in his tracks, looking at her. "What?"

"Huh? Uh, nothing... Just... Were you ever in movies?"

"No!"

"Nothing, then. Guess you just reminded me of someone. I don't even remember what..."

The other squire paused as he passed with an armload of ammo, then snapped his fingers. "Hey, I know! She looks just like the chick from that stupid movie the Tick made us watch last month!"  
The Tick looked over. "Holy _kaka_, you're right! But there's no way you can pin that on me!" He pointed to the Flea. "It was _his_ turn to pick!"

"No, it wasn't!" said the Flea. "I wasn't even there until twenty minutes in. And anyway, I didn't think it was _that_ bad." Sunflower, who happened to be strolling by with five meters of chain, paused, and then strolled a little faster.

"Say," said Abbie, "does that guy ever say anything?"

"Well, of course..." a squire said, his voice quickly trailing off.

Zaratustra returned to the two scientists. "We are ready to move the temporal displacement platform. We have located a bank that should be reasonably secure. Also, there are small arms sonic signatures coming from the crash site. The helicopter crew may have survived. I recommend an excursion to take a prisoner."

"Very well," the vaguely African scientist said. "Send the civilians over; I wish to speak to them." A minute or so later, he was addressing Austin. "I am Dr. Nibeaux. I am chief of Strategic Biological Deterrents Development in Serbia."

Nibeaux talked while they walked toward a bank. Behind them, Sunflower and two squires carried the time machine. As they entered the bank, he got to what he clearly considered the most important question: "The disease here is one never recorded before. Tell me, did it appear suddenly? Without a known origin?"

Austin shook his head. "You're thinking it could have been introduced by time travel? No. It came from central America. There was actually an outbreak a year ago, of a milder strain, but it was mistaken for rabies."

"Interesting," Nibeaux said, sounding a little too interested. Off to one side, there was a crunch as the finbacks rammed the disk of the time machine into a hangar for armored cars. Behind them, Zaratustra entered followed by the Flea, the Tick and a prisoner in an Air Force flight suit.

"This," Zaratustra said, "is Captain Humphries."

"So," the officer said, "are you all human?"

"Yes," said Paulus. "We come from the year 2044… at any rate, a year 2044."

"So… who built your time machine?"

"We will ask the questions," Nibeaux said sharply.

"You've sure caused a big fuss," Humphries said. "The higher-ups are going all out, even with the Pandemic to deal with."

"It appears," Nibeaux said, "that a large number of these `infected' are converging on us. Do you know anything about this?"

The airman frowned, then nodded. "That would make sense. The fighting's been slacking off for the last 48 hours, and command says it's because the zees are dying off. If they were coming here, there would be the same result for different reasons."

"What were your orders?" Zaratustra interjected.

"We were to take out any large concentrations of the infected first," said the fight officer. "Then we were to try to take out you, without damaging your transport."

"You had orders to kill them?" Krista said. "Didn't you notice they were _killing_ zombies?"

Zed chuckled. "Only natural... Can you contact your side?"

"My radio's working," Humphries said, "but it won't matter. Command has a plan, and nothing I tell them will make a difference. They'll do everything they can to get that saucer thing, and if they can't do that, they're going strategic on your **. Sorry, you don't seem like bad guys."

"It is curious," Paulus said. "The military response is predictable, but why are these `zombies' coming? How did they begin gathering even before we arrived?"

Zed looked to Austin. "Young Austin," he asked abruptly, "do you believe in God?" Startled, the young man shrugged and muttered non-commitally. "Have you read Nietzsche?"

"A little," he said.

"I was raised learning them," he said. "I admire him to this day. But, I long sense judged him a failure, for try as he might, he could not dispense with God. He wrote that `God is dead', but he must have seen the paradox: How can God die, without first living? And if he had written simply, `God does not exist and never did', why, then he would have introduced the creature even in its absence. Even if man traverses the universes, he cannot rid himself of God."

"What on Earth are you talking about?" Paulus said. He flinched at Zed's glare.

"I mean this, fool," Zaratustra said. "It is not mere law and chance that set the universes on their courses. It is power and will! And the power and will of this universe do not include us, therefore this universe acts to destroy us, as blood acts against a germ! You must get us out of here!"

"I can't," Paulus said. "Not yet. The machine would take us out of here, but we have no idea if it would get us home. We can't try to leave until we figure out how we got here!"

"Uh, actually," said the Flea, "we might need to get out of here a little sooner." Outside, ten thousand zombies were charging for the bank.


	6. Chapter 6

From the second floor of the bank, Austin looked down on the advancing horde. The first wave of zombies hit the door before the finbacks opened fire. He covered his ears as a squire beside him let fly with a .50 cal. This time, the gun was loaded with "duplex" rounds, which fired two incendiary bullets with each shot. On the stairs in front of the bank, the Flea mowed zombies down with short bursts of the MG42, while the Tick fired single shots from a "Shpagin" submachine gun. The zombies soon faltered, stumbling on the dead, but soon resurged. That was when Sunflower stepped forward, bearing the drive shaft. Now, his improvised weapon had a chain attached, weighted with an engine cylinder. He descended the stairs amidst concentrated Dushka fire, clubbing any zombie in his path. Only when he was in the midst of the horde did he swing the chain. The chain swung in full circles at head height, carving a circle of death through the ranks of the zombies. The Tick followed behind, kicking to death the occasional zombie that got under the chain.

"You know how to shoot?" the squire asked Austin.

"I can handle a twelve gauge," he answered.

The squire thrust an extra Shpagin into his hands. "It's on single shots," he told him.

"Then it's different from the production version," Austin said.

"Right. Then I suppose you know the drum holds 70 shots- okay, 71, but we take out a round to prevent jamming. When one of them gets to the bottom of the steps, shoot it in the head." Austin took the gun, fired and missed, then corrected for the unfamiliar sight and hit a zombie in the throat. The squire resumed firing the Dushka.

Austin picked off one zombie after another, usually firing two shots to play things safe. He, the squire were holding their own, if only because many approaching zombies were turning back around to attack the exotroopers. The Tick and Sunflower were completely enveloped by the horde, and still advancing deeper. They seemed invincible, but Austin knew better. From knights to tanks, armor was never a good match for massed infantry at close quarters, and these finbacks were no exception. He could see that more were getting past the chain. He saw the shaft swing and the chain falter in its course as Sunflower clubbed a zombie. He heard a burst cut short as the Tick's Shpagin finally went dry. The circle quickly shrank. Then there was a terrific blast, or rather two, as the Tick fired Sunflower's recoilless gun. From the front, thousands of flechettes bored into the horde. In the back, a blast of flame carved a still wider swath of destruction, torching zombies, scattering debris and even blowing up cars up to fifty feet behind the gun.

Austin dropped back, dazed by the noise and light, while the recoilless gun fire again and again. As he descended to the bottom floor, the Flea whooped and ran out to catch up with his partner, merrily squandering his remaining ammunition. Behind the counter, the other squire raised a 12-gauge "pistol" in warning, and he smiled and set the gun on the counter before heading to the back. He found the two scientists still discussing theory, in the presence of the sisters, the prisoner and Zed. "So, it is agreed: This world is an `alternate' continuum, one similar to ours, in which history followed a different path," said Paulus.

"What, like _Sliding Doors_?" Abbs said.

Paulus continued, disregarding her, "Other space-times are an implication of quantum physics..."

"You said there was another explanation," Zaratustra said. "Also, I believe there is an anomaly requiring explanation. The squires noticed..."

As he explained the odd conversation, Nibeaux said, "Of course! It's not a matter of quantum physics, it's about Platonic metaphysics!" As he spoke, Zaratustra's hands seemed to teleport around his neck. With no less rapidity, Nibeaux drew a small grenade launcher and thrust it under Zed's beaklike face mask. "Thix zhould be incherexting," the scientist gargled coolly. "You knew."

"I suspected," Zaratustra said. "I awaited additional evidence. Then I waited to see if anyone else would figure it out."

"What- the- ?" Krista said. Zaratustra and Nibeaux both looked coldly at the interloper. Austin took her by the arm and pulled her back.

"If you don't want us here, then let us go," he said.

Zed looked at him curiously. Nibeaux spoke: "You want something, Archon. What is it?"

"I cannot be certain of the implications," Zed answered. "Two heads are better than one, as it were."

"Let me go, and I will tell you." Zed shook his head. "Then agree to release me, and do me no harm, and I will tell you." Zed nodded.

"Come on!" Abbs said. "What are either of you thinking? You can't trust him, and he can't trust you! And what's it about, anyway?"

"Actually, Zaratustra here has a peculiar psychology," Nibeaux said calmly. "He will not tell a lie, and he will not break a promise. But, as you can see, he will take liberties…"

"Plato," Austin said to the girl, "compared the world to shadows on the wall of a cave. That means that our universe is only a product of higher realities, the way a shadow is created by light, an intervening object and a surface. And what they mean is that we are a `shadow' to their world."

"What," Krista interjected, "like our universe only exists because someone in yours dreamed it?"

"She does catch on quickly," Zaratustra said, tilting his head a little to one side.

"Nonsense," Paulus said with a frown.

"Faster than some," Nibeaux mused.

"That would probably be putting it too crudely," Zaratustra said. "If the analogy holds, then both our universes- and who knows how many more besides- are derived from a higher realm of reality. That reality manifested itself in our world as a film, whereas here it is manifested as the world itself."

"So why did you end up here?" Austin asked boldly.

"It was no coincidence," Nibeaux said. "We came here because one of us thought of this film."

"Come on!" said Paulus. "What, are you going to say the machine is telepathic?"

He flinched under Zaratustra's glare. The prisoner Humphries chuckled. "Somebody in the higher-ups developed a plan for something like this," the airman said. "They knew there was no chance of anyone building a time machine with existing technology... But that wouldn't keep someone from getting hold of one."

As Paulus's frown deepened, Zed chuckled, too. "Do not act like it was a secret," said the exotrooper. "You did not build the machine; you found it. In hindsight, that was a bad sign."

Humphries nodded. "Whoever did build it abandoned it, because they realized they couldn't get back home."

"But there is another possibility," Nibeaux said. "They built it, knowing exactly what it would do. It brought them to the world they desired, and then they had no further use for it. And if one of us has the right talent, he can be as a god."

"...or goddess," Krista murmured.


	7. Chapter 7

The barrel of the Flea's MG 42 sang with heat as he blazed away at the zombies, while the last recoilless shell sailed over the heads of the horde. The projectile sailed into a side street from which more zombies poured before bursting in a cloud of phosphorous. As the white smoke drifted down, the zombies it touched caught fire. The exotroopers fought back to back to back, retreating down the path of the backblast. Sunflower lashed his chain, and the Flea blazed away with the MG42. But the zombies pressed on, with enough force to shove the seemingly invincible warriors about. The weakest points in their armor- the coolant line that hooked the fins to the pelvis, the exposed servos on the inner calves, the flexible greaves over the buttocks- faced away from their attackers. Still, zombies managed to grab and pull at comparatively vulnerable components. The Tick kicked away a zombie that grabbed hold of a hose, which was only pulled further out of shape as the zombie went flying. A crawling zombie thrust its hand into Sunflower's calf servo, with mutually devastating results. Then, as the tank destroyer faltered, a score and more of zombies took hold of the chain and dragged him away from the others.

The Flea fired the last of his belt into a car 15 meters away. The resulting fireball thinned the zombies that rushed in. The Tick swung the recoilless gun like a club, and fired both barrels of hie wrist launcher. Then, gripping the gun by the barrel, he lunged after Sunflower and struck the chain with the breach. The chain snapped, and the breach block cracked. Sunflower staggered back, and the zombies holding the chain did likewise. Then the Tick pulled Sunflower back, reforming their three-man phalanx just before the horde could overwhelm the Flea. As the Flea reloaded with a 50-round "feed bag", a zombie grabbed hold of his weapon's white-hot muzzle. Diseased flesh fused to the metal like meat to a skillet. Sunflower brained the zombie, and they beat their retreat as beast they could through the narrowing path back to the bank.

A new sound roared through the bank as Dreadlocks and Zaratustra opened fire. Their weapons were 14.5 mm anti-materiel rifles. Dreadlocks used a modern semiautomatic weapon, while Zed fired a working replica of a World War 2, single-shot PTRD 41. Dreadlocks downed a wave of zombies with exploding rounds, while Zed took three leisurely shots at a tanker truck 100 meters away. A wave of hot air spiderwebbed the windows in front of the bank. Then the finback party came practically flying through the front door.

The Flea unhooked the belt, and a squire ran forward with a replacement for the overheated, possibly fouled barrel. "Forget that," the Tick said. "That thing's hot enough to cook off a round in the chamber!"

"Nah," the Flea said as he worked a lever to eject the barrel, "the gun's fine just a little- yaah!" He reflexively cast away the barrel. Smoke rose from his theoretically fireproof gauntlet. The barrel struck a wood-paneled wall, and promptly set the wood smoldering. Abbs darted over and sprayed it with a fire extinguisher

Behind the counter, Krista rose from a crouch, to see what she could of the parking lot. A few moments was enough to see all that mattered. The finbacks had devastated and scattered the horde, but not destroyed it. Already, surviving zombies were regathering into ragged packs. Volleys from Dreadlocks' rifle and short bursts from the Dushka were enough to shatter the emerging groups, but not as fast as new ones were forming. She managed to smile as she looked down at Austin. "C'mon, get up, everything's-" Her words trailed off. Timidly, looking almost ashamed, he held up a little velvet box. Tears welled from her eyes, and he thrust it back in his pocket. She dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his neck, running her fingers through his curly hair, down the back of his neck, carefully avoiding the spot where she had bandaged his shoulder. "Austin," she said, "you know it's yes. Yes forever. Whatever happens, I'm not going to leave you." She tried to turn his head to kiss him, but he pushed her to arm's length.

"The worst part... when I go," he said as he stroked her cheek, "will be when I stop loving you."

"We have achieved everything we could have hoped to," Zaratustra said to Paulus as he descended the stairs. "We have given you time, no more, no less. Can you take us home?"

Paulus only fidgeted, but Nibeaux spoke, firmly and finally. "No," he said. Behind him, Abbs went to Austin and hugged him. Suddenly, Nibeaux pointed to the little trio. "But they can."


	8. Chapter 8

"Wha- You want us to get you out of here?" Krista exclaimed. "If you don't know how that thing works, we can't do any better."

"Think, girl!" he said. "What was in your mind, when we arrived?"

"I was wishing... praying... that we would find a way to a place where we all would be safe."

"Me too," said Abbs.

"Very well! Then can you deny that our machine gives you what you wish?" Nibeaux said. "The machine came to you because somehow, it is already attuned to your minds. That is the key. We could not have entered your universe without it being willed within as well as without."

"And you know that how?" Abbs said with rolled eyes.

"No," Austin said. "The logic follows, but it doesn't go far enough. You and Zaratustra agreed that our universe is trying to reject you. Wouldn't it first try to keep you out- and wouldn't that be easier than what's been done to destroy you? Then how could one mind get past that?"

"It only needs to be a small influence," Nibeaux said, "and not necessarily from just one... The women, I think. The female mind is more sensitive to the higher planes, and two acting in proximity..."

"Stopped talking about us like we're machinery!" Krista snapped.

"Lady," said the Tick, "to him, _everybody_ is!"

"Even so, the boy is right," Zaratustra said. "The will which opposes us cannot be undone by anything lesser than itself. There is a higher will, then! Their wish is heeded because it is aligned with the will that is greater than this universe. Indeed, it may be that their very wishing is itself ordained by that higher will. And by that same will, it may be that we saw the film which put this universe in our minds..."

"Huh?" said Krista.

"Why?" said Abbs.

"So you _would _be safe," Austin said, "even if it was in another universe."

"But how would they be better off there than we are here?" said Paulus.

"This universe opposes us because we threaten to change what it wills," Zaratustra said. "But in another universe, newcomers might be acceptable- even necessary- to achieve the ends of its will."

Austin locked eyes with Krista. She only shook her head. Then Austin saw Zaratustra, looking piercingly at them from behind the lenses of his visor. The exotrooper started to move.

Then the sound of rotors came overhead. On the floor directly above them, the Dushka fired, until an explosion blew the squire through the ceiling. But the beat of rotors was becoming uneven, and within moments, there was a tremendous crash from the parking lot. The finbacks ran to the front, all except Zed. Krista shouted in inarticulate protest, and Austin had to restrain her from running after them. "You know something," Zed said.

"I'll tell you," Austin said, "if you make a promise..." Zed inclined his helmet, in what none could fail to recognize as a gesture that he was ready to listen, if not necessarily to grant. "If they get you home, you let them take the machine."

"No deal," Nibeaux said, drawing his gun. He showed no concern when the Flea went flying through the front door and slid across the lobby floor. "I will give them safety- in our space-time- as subjects for study."

"I can make sure that they are treated well," Zed added. He cocked his head when Sunflower sprawled through the doorway.

"You want us to be lab rats?" Krista said caustically.

Austin clasped her hand. "It's a chance."

"If we go, he comes with us," Krista said.

"No," Paulus said. "We can't carry that much additional weight."

Nibeaux fired. "Now we can," he said. Zaratustra heaved Paulus over the rail.

The remaining squire hauled the Tick through the door. Dreadlocks came right behind. "We scattered them," he said, "but there's more coming. Lots more."

"We can leave momentarily," Nibeaux said. "Austin, girls- come aboard."

"Wait, just a minute," Krista said. Weeping, she embraced Austin. "Do it."

He knelt and opened the box. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Yes forever." He put the ring on her finger. She sobbed as she stepped aboard.

Abbie paused to embrace Austin. "If it hadn't been for us... you could have made it."

"Without you," he said, "it wouldn't have been worth making it."

The girl stepped aboard. Austin followed, almost reluctantly, but Zaratustra blocked the gate. "You may board when it is ready."

Austin nodded. "Step to the panel," Nibeaux said to Krista. "Do exactly as I tell you." She complied, while Nibeaux kept his gun pointed in her sister's general direction.

"I want to know," Austin said to Zaratustra, "what were you trying to do with the machine?"

Zed chuckled. "Kill Joseph Stalin."

The young man nodded. "I could respect that."

The other finbacks returned to the front, even the Flea, who got back on his feet looking slightly drunk. With trembling hands, Krista punched keys. Then, a thunderous knocking came from the side entrance. The Flea turned aside and went to answer it. "Okay," he said, stepping to one side. Just outside the door was the muzzle of a 155mm self-propelled howitzer. "Who ordered a pizza?"


	9. Chapter 9

The finbacks all turned, raising weapons. Zaratustra was fastest. He leveled his PTRD, and fired straight down the muzzle of the self-propelled gun. The Flea slammed the door and loped a few steps, before being sent flying again as a massive explosion tore through the wall.

Nibeaux staggered as debris , and that was all the time that the sisters needed. Abbs swung a nightstick, knocking the gun from the doctor's hand. Zaratustra whirled, but Austin fired the 12-gauge into his visor, buying just enough time for Krista to grab Nibeaux's gun and fire. The small grenade knocked the finback off the platform, to land with a terrible sound on top of Austin. She stared in horror, but when Nibeaux reached for her, she leveled the gun at him. "Which button starts this thing?" she said.

Off the platform, the finbacks were in disarray. The squire was pinned by debris. The Tick was helping the Flea back to his feet. Dreadlocks had broken open his rifle. Sunflower raised his recoilless gun, but hesitated to fire for obvious reasons. "Drop your guns, or he gets it," Krista said to the finbacks, then to Nibeaux, "Which button?"

"I will show you," Nibeaux said, as if addressing a child in a tantrum. "Just think this through, girl. This machine can take you anywhere." He backed up at Krista's prodding.

"Krista!" Abbs said, "I think I found it!"

Nibeaux backed to the gate. "Operating the machine isn't all I can do," he said. "You have special abilities. I can help you learn what they are, how to use them."

"Get off!" she hissed.

Sunflower looked questioningly at his commander. Dreadlocks spoke in Serbian, with a tone that left no doubt of the gist: "Shoot through that _ponor._" The tank destroyer knelt and took careful aim.

"If you don't want anything for yourself," Nibeaux said with scorn, "then think of him. This is not the only universe where he exists. I can help you find the right one-" She screeched and kicked him overboard. Before Sunflower could fire, Krista darted to the console, and she and her sister pushed an especially prominent button together. Arcs of energy shot through the poles. Sunflower raised his gun. But the Tick leaped for the platform, and the Flea followed. They grabbed hold of the rail, as a field of blue light wrapped around the platform. Before they could climb aboard, the platform vanished- and they disappeared with it.

Zaratustra rose to his hands and knees, then to his feet. One glance confirmed that the machine was gone. Then his gaze lit on Nibeaux as he sat up. "You will die," the exotrooper said to the scientist, not in wrath but cold-blooded certainty. The other finbacks rushed to Zed's sides to restrain him, but he reached out nevertheless. "You will die by installment plan!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Here's the finale, or epilogue. I shortened the last part of the story to get things done sooner, but this part is pretty much exactly what I envisioned. The second part in particular is something I thought of quite a while ago, as an alternate ending for my novel "Walking Dead" where most of the finback group were introduced and then got killed off without saying any lines. As I developed them into nominal "good guys" with their own adventures, I couldn't avoid thinking of ways to giving at least some of them a "happy ending".**

Krista stepped off the platform, into another post-apocalyptic Oklahoma cityscape. "Do you think it worked?" Abbs said.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm sorry we couldn't go someplace better, but it had to be here."

"I know," Abbs said. "Austin knew it first. The only world with a place for us... would be one where you and he never met. Where- where he didn't die saving us." She hugged her sister and cried.

"This won't get us far," Krista said a few minutes later, as they hotwired an obviously marginal humvee, "but it will get us out of here."

"And then we look for Austin?" Krista nodded. "But- what if that's not supposed to be what happens?"

"I think," Krista said, "it _is _what's meant to happen, in any universe. It's like the guy with the crown said: We're like an organ transplant. If this universe didn't bring me and Austin together, then something is missing from it- and we're what it needs to fill the empty space. I don't think we even need to look for him. One way or another, we will be led to each other."

She wiped a tear from her eye. "The only problem is, he still won't be our Austin- God, remember how he was the first time we went out to lunch? No guts, no conversational skills, no self-confidence- and no hope. But I can teach him all of that, even if it has to start with him even worse off than he was."

"But that's not the only problem," Abbs said. "You getting together with Austin didn't just change him, it changed us... It changed us even more. To fit in this world, we have to become what we would have been without him. It's not going to be a choice. We will go back to the way we used to be. We won't even remember our Austin. But it's okay- it just means we get to know him all over again."

"Austin," Krista murmured as they drove out of site of the machine.

"Austin who?" Abbs said. For a moment, Krista seemed to be trying to remember herself.

"Not who, where," she said, a little shakily. "Austin, Texas. We'll going through Texas, as far as Austin. That will get us around the places with the most zombies. Then we go back north, and keep going till we reach California." She used a tissue to wipe her eyes.

"I love you, Krista," Abbie said.

Krista squeezed her hand. "I love you to, Abbs. Whatever happens, we'll be together- just you and me."

_Sometime, somewhere..._

In an especially inhospitable valley in a mountainous disputed zone, smoke still rose from burning wrecks in the snow. A crevasse at the base of a hillside was filled with rock from a fresh avalanche. On the plain before it, there was a lump in the snow. Then, the snow shifted, and out burst the Flea.

"Hello?" he called out as he wandered the battle plain. "Anybody still standing?" As he approached the crevasse, another finback suddenly dragged himself out of the rock pile. The Flea knew his partner on sight, and ran to him. "Kosmo! Are you all right?"

"Yeah, far as I can tell," the Tick said as he extricated himself from an embrace. "I guess I mostly landed on top of the big rocks, instead of vice versa."

The Flea looked around. "Did we lose the battle?"

"Eh... Looks like it was a tie to me. Now let's go. Zed wired Nibeaux's lab to blow."

As they clambered up the cliffs that lined the valley, the Flea looked uneasily back at a second lump in the snow. "Holy kaka," the Tick called down, "and you're the one who keeps saying I'm too slow! Get a move on!"

The Flea shook his head and doubled his pace, shouting good-natured invectives as he passed his partner.

_I I I want you to know- I need you_

_I I I want you to know- it's true_

_There's no no no no way I'd make it without you_

_It's so good to know_

_I've got a friend like you_


End file.
